


there could never be another

by r1ker



Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 08:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6367117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/timmcgraw/mybestfriend.html</p></blockquote>





	there could never be another

After they're back together, they go back to Texas.

 

Just as it was the first time they left the drive back is long. Alton's long gone by the time they reach the Lafayette County border in Mississippi, about an hour out from the delta and the easternmost Arkansas border. He sleeps with his head pressed to the window, skin warm from the sun beaming in from outside as it travels by them quickly.

 

Roy drifts in and out himself, head falling onto his shoulder. He and Lucas have their clasped hands resting on Roy's left thigh, Lucas keeping control of the car with his other hand. He almost can't drive for the maddening way one of Roy's thumbs strokes the palm of his hand but somehow he soldiers through. There's no more solitude in his car. In his passenger seat is the first thing he ever loved with everything in him, and in the back is his child that's an absolute picture of him. That picture's worth a thousand words, and so is the one Lucas finds himself in right now.

 

Just as they've come to a very rare stoplight in this neck of the woods Lucas turns his head to look at Roy. He can't get enough; it's been so long since he's had the privilege of looking at that face not behind the back window of a truck. That sun that warms the car spreads brilliantly gold streaks of light across Roy's hair, his face, and for as long as it takes for him to take his foot off the brake as the light turns green Lucas can't breathe.

 

"You haven't stopped looking at me since we got out," Roy comments, taking heed the voracious gaze that's never left him since that moment. The words come out matter-of-factly but even Lucas can spot out of the corner of his eye the warm smile spreading across Roy's face. Proven now is how well they've got one another, in this relationship deep and strong.

 

"You're a pleasure to look at," Lucas refutes with the same sort of casualty they've both adopted in knowing one another. Roy's smile grows a little more and he clutches Lucas's hand tighter. "Fact of the matter is, I haven't gotten to see all that much of you in the last twenty years, so forgive me if I catch up on ogling."

 

"You're not looking at much, I just got older. I got old and I got wrinkly, and for some reason you're looking at me like I'm still nineteen. And for another reason I admire that," Roy chuckles. Lucas would have thought he was still that same doe-eyed boy who tasted like bubble gum and was as soft as a blanket beneath his fingertips if the years didn't say otherwise. His life aged him, being who he was as a person aged him to his very core, but time preserved Roy's very self like artwork.

 

"You're not wrinkled, you're perfect," Lucas argues with all the passion someone who's been that smitten for that long has got. Roy shakes his head, knows almost twenty years of being without Lucas alone was enough to age him several years past his allotted time. He was 41 on paper but decades past that in feeling, in appearance, and emotion.

 

They'd looked at him on the ranch, the people they deemed medical professionals though there was nothing really like that ever present, said something about his hair falling out and his weight dropping. He'd gotten a rash on his upper back, around the spots Lucas had marked that very last time their bodies had come together, as if his body was noting no other spots bore the effects of Lucas's ministrations.

 

Roy had known right then and there it wasn’t getting used to ranch life. He would have never guessed it looking at it in the moment that being without Lucas was doing the most damage to him. It had gone back to normal after a few weeks, after his mind and his body getting used to being without the presence of another, but still he'd get sick to his stomach from time to time knowing the only one he'd ever loved with all of his heart miles away.

 

Now that he's back here, in a car with his child and his best friend – _lover_ , Lucas _loves you,_ he _always has_ – and that sick feeling isn't here at all. In fact, it's not even in the vicinity. It's like he can breathe without the anvil on his chest, the elephant taking repose on his heart, the hand squeezing tight around his gut.

 

"I got sick," he mentions finally, once he's decided their casual return to silence leaves too much unsaid about the past between the two of them. "When I got there. They had noticed right away I wasn't going along with the status quo. I couldn't do it; I couldn't jump right in to such a thing – who could blame me? So I ended up in their little convalescence area. Told me it was the side effects of leaving my past life. I thought it was getting used to the climate out there, the weather, the food, whatever… didn't know until later on that meant you."

 

Lucas squeezes his hand tight, wraps his fingers more firmly between Roy's. Part of him wants to turn this car around, take them off their current inlaid path for whatever place isn't this one, and burn the ranch to the fucking ground. His mind redirects his violence to the one he clings to desperately, reminds him that he is no longer under their influence, their control. He stops the car on the shoulder of the road gently, not suddenly as to suggest his developing concern.

 

Roy can't say he's prepared for Lucas leaning over the console and kissing him. He accepts graciously, forgot for a second just how long it had been to have the scent of peppermint and worn leather curling around the two of them. Roy makes sure Lucas's knee isn't going to switch off the emergency brake or the gear shift and pulls him in closer, still buckled seat belt keeping him back just enough to keep it tame.

 

Finally they pull back, keeping the tips of their noses touching and breathing in the same air. Roy smiles at him, takes note at how full of himself Lucas looks for finally giving in, at a loss for words at just how long it had been without feeling shame for what he is.

 

The sect leaders had told him right off the bat – Roy figures his dad got mouthy at one of the meetings and went off about his "special" (God, it's not special, stop treating like it's a phenomenon and not perfectly normal) relationship with Lucas – that it was wrong, that he ought to be ashamed for going that long living a lie God would obviously have no hand in.

 

"I was so mad," Lucas confesses, "I was so mad for so long because I had no choice but to sit there and watch them take you away, where you didn't know anybody halfway decent or anybody that knew just how fucking special you are to me and I…" Roy stops him in his reverie with another kiss, pulls Lucas closer to him by the neck and worming a hand down to undo his seatbelt.

 

Lucas takes his mouth away just enough to finish speaking in the closer proximity of their faces. "I wrote so many letters. I'd try and send them and they'd come back to me maybe three days later, the address didn't exist, the receiver rejected them. If I had only known more about it all I'd have gotten you out sooner, trust me."

 

Roy shakes his head, gives him a kiss to the cheek for his troubles. Never in all of this did he blame Lucas. There was never any mention of his failure to follow through on pursuing them to the ranch then whisking Roy away. Between them was an understood thing of how inevitable the whole situation was, how this was something that was bound to happen at some time or another. But that is the past. And from now on, for the type of men they are and how bound they are to the child sleeping in the back seat, they will no longer dwell on that part of their lives.

 

So again Roy kisses him, softly on the forehead to use this in place of a rebuttal. And Lucas turns the car back on, takes it out of park and onto a slow cruise to rejoin highway traffic. And on they drive.

**Author's Note:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/timmcgraw/mybestfriend.html


End file.
